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. 2020 Apr;8(8):528.
doi: 10.21037/atm.2020.04.26.

COVID-19 will stimulate a new coronavirus research breakthrough: a 20-year bibliometric analysis

Zhengbo Tao  1 , Siming Zhou  1 , Renqi Yao  2   3 , Kaicheng Wen  1 , Wacili Da  1 , Yan Meng  1 , Keda Yang  1 , Hang Liu  4 , Lin Tao  1   5
Affiliations

COVID-19 will stimulate a new coronavirus research breakthrough: a 20-year bibliometric analysis

Zhengbo Tao et al. Ann Transl Med. 2020 Apr.

Abstract

Background: COVID-19 is currently rampant in China, causing unpredictable harm to humans. This study aimed to quantitatively and qualitatively investigate the research trends on coronaviruses using bibliometric analysis to identify new prevention strategies.

Methods: All relevant publications on coronaviruses were extracted from 2000-2020 from the Web of Science database. An online analysis platform of literature metrology, bibliographic item co-occurrence matrix builder (BICOMB) and CiteSpace software were used to analyse the publication trends. VOSviewer was used to analyse the keywords and research hotspots and compare COVID-19 information with SARS and MERS information.

Results: We found a total of 9,760 publications related to coronaviruses published from 2000 to 2020. The Journal of Virology has been the most popular journal in this field over the past 20 years. The United States maintained a top position worldwide and has provided a pivotal influence, followed by China. Among all the institutions, the University of Hong Kong was regarded as a leader for research collaboration. Moreover, Professors Yuen KY and Peiris JSM made great achievements in coronavirus research. We analysed the keywords and identified 5 coronavirus research hotspot clusters.

Conclusions: We considered the publication information regarding different countries, institutions, authors, journals, etc. by summarizing the literature on coronaviruses over the past 20 years. We analysed the studies on COVID-19 and the SARS and MERS coronaviruses. Notably, COVID-19 must become the research hotspot of coronavirus research, and clinical research on COVID-19 may be the key to defeating this epidemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; Coronavirus; bibliometric analysis; keywords; research hotspots.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at http://dx.doi.org/10.21037/atm.2020.04.26). The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow chart of literature filtering included in this study.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Output of related literature. The number of annual publications (A) and growth trends of the top 10 countries/regions (B) in coronavirus from 2000 to 2020.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The distribution of countries/regions and institutions. The network map of institutions that involved in coronavirus research (A) and the cooperation of countries/regions (B).
Figure 4
Figure 4
The distribution of authors engaged in coronavirus research. The network map of productive authors (A) and the network map of co-cited authors (B).
Figure 5
Figure 5
The analysis of keywords in publications of coronavirus research. Mapping of the keywords in the area of coronavirus (A). Distribution of keywords was presented according to the appearance for the average time (B).
Figure 6
Figure 6
The top 25 keywords with the strongest citation bursts during 2000 to 2020.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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